


Drazi Queen

by jedi_penguin



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-15
Updated: 2010-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedi_penguin/pseuds/jedi_penguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was Russian.  She should have known better.</p><p>This fic relies heavily on “The Geometry of Shadows” and won't make much sense if you haven’t seen it.  The opening scene is taken straight from “TGoS,” and goes significantly AU from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drazi Queen

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Siryn99’s [Heroine Ficathon](http://www.livejournal.com/users/siryn99/75614.html). I wrote for Megan (lipontrn), who wanted a non-smutty story about Susan Ivanova.

It began, as so many things did, with Ivanova losing her temper. In a few short days, the damn Drazi had started brawls all over Babylon 5, broken her foot, murdered each other, taken her hostage, and made her look bad before her new commanding officer. Oh, Captain Sheridan had been nice enough about her humiliations. Sympathetic. Understanding. Condescending. These things always put her in a bad mood.

But what really got to her, what really pushed her over the edge, was the justification the Drazis used for their actions. They were engaged in a bloody civil war, but **why** were they fighting? Was it because of political differences? Religious conflicts or disparity in social classes? Feuding families or ethnic alliances? No, no, no, no, and no. It was none of those things, or anything else that made any damn sense to a reasonable person. The Drazi split their society into two every five years simply and solely according to the vagaries of chance. They reached into a giant pot and blindly pulled out cloths, green or purple. They abandoned all friendships and familial connections and devoted themselves to bashing in the heads of anyone who wore a different color cloth. She was as tolerant as the next person, or at least she tried to be, but this was **stupid**.

It irritated the hell out of Ivanova that her leg had been broken in such a pointless battle. She didn’t mind a broken limb or two when she was fighting for something important, but **this**? When the Green Leader suggested that humans were just as moronic as the Drazi, however, she lost it. “Our flags at least mean something,” she explained hotly. “It’s not as arbitrary as yanking a color out of a box. I mean, you’re fighting and dying over a stupid piece of cloth!” The blank faces were the final straw. Wanting a physical release to her frustration, Ivanova leaned over and yanked said cloth off of the Drazi spokesperson. She held it up and shook it in the Drazi’s face. “Look! There’s nothing special about it! It’s not patriotic. It’s got nothing but this stupid little star in the middle of it.”

The Green Leader huffed, as she might have expected, but the look on his face stopped her cold. He didn’t look angry or outraged, which is how all the Drazis had looked the **last** time she had snatched away a Drazi cloth; no, he looked awed. Ivanova’s anger suddenly disappeared, replaced by an overwhelming feeling of apprehension. “What?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”

Physically shaking himself back into the moment, the Green Leader earnestly explained, “Who takes green is Green, follows Green Leader. Who takes cloth for Green Leader **is** Green Leader. Greens follow Green Leader.”

Garibaldi whistled, but Ivanova barely heard him. She was too busy trying to grasp the implications of the latest Drazi insanity. “Wait a minute. You’re saying just because I’m holding this right now **I’m** Green Leader?” The Drazis all smiled uncomfortably, confirming her guess. “But I’m human,” she objected stupidly.

The Green Leader (or rather, the **old** Green Leader) cringed. “Rules of combat older than contact with other races. Do not mention aliens.” He gave her a rueful grin, and Ivanova found herself almost feeling sorry for the Drazis. “Rules change, caught up in committee. Not come through yet.”

“Yeah. Bureaucracy. Tell me about it. “ Ivanova took a deep breath, and thought about her next move. “Well, what do you know? Alright. Greens follow Green Leader, hmm? Green Leader says you’re all coming with us down to the Quartermaster’s Office. I’m sure there’ll be some dye hanging around. Those of you not spending the next two months in the brig for assaulting an Earth Alliance Officer will look absolutely **gorgeous** in purple!”

Ivanova had been so proud of herself, so certain that she had come up with a brilliant solution. She’d been a fool.

Her first indication that there might be a drawback to her plan came when the first Drazi pulled his cloth out of the vat of purple dye. The others immediately set upon him, but Ivanova settled that problem by ordering all the Drazi’s to reach into the vat simultaneously and pull out their cloths. Then they all immediately set upon her, as the sole remaining green. In order to save herself from more broken bones, she immediately dyed her own sash and grabbed it back as soon as she could.

She should have just let them all beat her up. Really, what was a broken leg or two? Broken arm, broken skull, what did she care about things like that?

As soon as Ivanova had her purple cloth in place, the old leader turned to her with a smile. “Greens defeated. No more Greens on Babylon 5. We go join our Purple brothers.”

“You do that,” Ivanova urged. “I’ll have Garibaldi let them out, and then you can have a nice party to celebrate.”

The Drazi muttered unhappily among themselves, and Ivanova wondered what was coming next. She didn’t have to wait long. “You come with us. Purples follow Purple Leader.”

“But, but-- I can’t go to the cargo hold,” Ivanova sputtered. “I’m very behind on my work, having spent most of the day being **kidnapped**. I have to go up to Command and Control.”

“We go with, you” one Drazi sighed sadly. “We wish to join our Purple brothers, but we must go where Purple Leader goes.”

“You can’t come with me to C and C,” she objected weakly.

“We must,” the old leader said firmly. “We are Purple. You took cloth for Purple Leader. You are Purple Leader. Purples follow Purple Leader.”

“No, I’m **not** ,” she insisted. “There’s already a Purple Leader. In the cargo hold. You go follow **him**.”

“Purple Drazi not follow **that** Purple Leader,” the old leader declared scornfully. “Drazi follow strongest Leader. Leader who destroy enemy. That Purple Leader trapped; you Purple Leader defeated Greens. Purples follow Purple Leader you.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Ivanova yelped. “You can’t make me your Leader! I’m human!”

“That not matter,” another Drazi insisted. “You Purple Leader. You very good Purple Leader. Best I see. You come back to Drazi Stronghold and be Drazi Leader.”

“What?” Ivanova took a deep breath, unable to believe that she had gotten herself into this mess. “No way. There’s absolutely no way. I’m not leaving Babylon 5, and I’m sure as hell not going to the stupid Drazi homeworld!”

Except, she did just that. The Drazi sent several warships and threatened to declare war upon the Earth Alliance if Babylon 5 didn’t “release” their Leader immediately. The fact that Ivanova didn’t want to go became irrelevant in the face of Babylon 5’s imminent destruction. Captain Sheridan asked her to go, as a personal favor to him, just until he could figure out a peaceful solution. He smiled his soulful, earnest smile at her, and she realized that she couldn’t say no.

Ivanova was a pilot and a damned good one. She’d joined Earth Force so that she could fly and she LOVED it even more than she had thought she would. Her childhood fantasies had even come true the previous year when she single-handedly saved the station from Raiders.

Not even her Russian pessimism could have dreamed that she would one day save Babylon 5 and perhaps the entire Earth Alliance not through her ability to fly a Star Fury but rather through her ability to eat six-tentacled _skron_.

Still, she tried to make the best of her detainment. The Drazis had alienated most of the other members of the Interstellar Alliance through their constant squabbling; Ivanova worked diligently to repair as many of these relationships as she could. She also ordered the Drazi to cut off all ties with the Raiders and to free the Enpheely. Although she was reluctant to admit it, Ivanova actually accomplished a great deal in the months following her coronation as Drazi Leader… but she longed to return to Babylon 5. Life among bad-tempered hermaphrodites wasn’t all that it cracked up to be.

Then the day came when Ivanova learned that she wouldn’t be returning. Sheridan sent a message indicating that there was some strange new enemy attacking the Narn, one that might well prove to be a danger to the entire galaxy. He wanted her to stay in place so that she could order her Drazi (and oh, how she hated to hear them called that!) to fight these “Shadows.”

Sheridan was wise, to request that she stay on as Drazi Leader. Perhaps even prophetic. Ivanova hated it when other people were right.

The next few years were bloody. Everyone suffered under onslaughts from The Shadows, but no one fought them harder than the Drazi. Not because they were especially brave or virtuous, but because they were too damn stupid to ever tell Ivanova “no” whenever she sent them out. Drazis died by the millions, and still they went out, because Purple Leader told them to.

In honor of the people who were dying by her command, Ivanova learned to speak the Drazi language, and to enjoy live food, and even to chuckle at the right place whenever her people told their horrible non-sensical jokes. She didn’t like the Drazi, and knew that she never would, but she did come to respect them. And to care about them.

They made a difference, her Drazi, but they paid a heavy price for it. All of the Drazi colonies were destroyed and much of the Drazi population was wiped out,… and still they fought. Ivanova knew that the Drazi never would have joined the Army of Light if it hadn’t been for her. Her placement as Purple Leader—stupid as it was—tipped the scale in favor of the Light. Many accounted her a hero, and Ivanova supposed that she was, but it was hard to believe sometimes. She missed the cleanness of fighting herself, of sitting in a Star Fury and risking no lives other than her own.

She wondered sometimes what her life would have been like if she weren’t surrounded by Drazis. Would she have come through the war if she were out flying in the thick of things? Would she have met someone, a man who might have become important to her? Would she have been promoted one day? Would the Army of Light have been successful in driving away The Shadows without the assistance of the Drazi? She’d never know, of course, because her life was what it was. But still, she did wonder sometimes.

Grabbing that stupid cloth ruined Ivanova’s life and led to the early deaths for hundreds of millions of Drazis, but it also contributed to the salvation of the universe. She was Russian enough to recognize it as a fair trade.

THE END


End file.
